SACRAMENTO — Billions of words have been regurgitated analyzing how Democrats flipped so many Republican seats last week. But all that’s really needed are five: Americans flipped off the president.
My quick in-depth elaboration:
Sure, voters were fed up with a botched war that raised gas prices to an intolerable level. And they were stung financially by nonsense tariffs that jacked up costs for farming, food, manufacturing and household necessities, including Halloween candy. But there was much more.
Americans were disgusted by the bullying, vindictiveness, ICE thuggery, self-enrichment and the president’s vain focus on monuments to himself, including a silly medieval ballroom, a hideous arch and an algae-laden reflecting pool.
Beyond that, they’d lost respect for the Republican lemmings in Congress who were too cowardly to back away from President Trump and chart their own path instead of sheepishly trailing him to the fatal cliff.
OK, enough of that.
These are other observations from the election:
First, as it turns out, one additional proposition should have been placed on the California ballot: a referendum on the death penalty.
Gov. Gavin Newsom should have shown respect for voters and asked them whether they wanted to abolish capital punishment. Especially since he promised while initially running for governor to “be accountable to the will of the voters. … I would not [put] my personal opinions in the way of the public’s right to make a determination [on] the death penalty.”
Voters rejected death penalty repeals in 2012 and 2016. In fact, they voted to expedite executions in 2016.
But soon after taking office in 2019, Newsom declared a moratorium on capital punishment. And his successor-elect, Xavier Becerra, has promised to maintain the policy. OK.
But last week, Newsom took an unprecedented extra step by announcing he will commute the death sentences of all 548 convicted murderers awaiting execution, reducing their punishments to life in prison without parole.
“I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California values,” Newsom declared. That’s his opinion. But he should have asked Californians about their values.
Back to the actual election:
Trump’s and the GOP’s self-immolation was sparked in Texas and that’s where they ultimately perished so dramatically.
The president last year strong-armed Gov. Greg Abbott into gerrymandering Texas’ U.S. House seats so Republicans could pick up five. And that triggered a national gerrymandering war that the GOP lost spectacularly.
Newsom and California smartly countered Trump and Texas by gerrymandering our House districts. Voters agreed by approving Proposition 50. Last week, Democrats gained five redrawn seats in California, while Republicans were losing many in Texas and all over America. Abbott was ousted as governor, and Texas even elected its first Democratic U.S. senator since 1988.
Not even Sam Houston could have saved Texas Republicans on Nov. 3.
Another observation:
Look at the vote count in any California statewide race where a Democrat and Republican competed — whether it was Becerra versus Steve Hilton or some other partisan constitutional office. The voting percentages are the same: roughly 65% Democrat, 35% Republican — landslide numbers in all six races mimicking each other.
What does that tell us? The campaigns and the candidates didn’t matter. All that mattered was whether the candidate was a “D” or an “R.” This is how polarized we’ve become.
Most of us are voting a straight party ticket — a far cry from my parents’ proud boast in the 1950s that they voted “for the candidate, not the party.” That was healthy. This is not, although last week’s blowout in congressional elections was certainly justified.
The blue wave also swept over state elections like an El Niño storm washing away an entire beach front.
Democrats increased their supermajorities in both California legislative chambers, very likely leaving Republicans with their fewest Senate and Assembly seats since the 1880s, according to veteran political analyst Tony Quinn.
Another watershed, of course, was California’s first election of a Latino governor.
There wasn’t even one Latino legislator when I first began covering the state Capitol as a twirp reporter in 1961. Now, the governor-elect and the top leader of each legislative chamber are Latinos. And California’s senior U.S. senator is a Latino.
For decades, California was a purple state that alternately elected Democrats and Republicans to high office. That changed after 1994 when the GOP aggressively backed the infamous Proposition 187 to deny public services, including education, to undocumented immigrants. The measure was ruled unconstitutional. But 187 awakened Latinos politically in California. And the GOP slid into the abyss.
Proposition “187 is where it started. And the party really has never gotten out from under it,” says Quinn, a former Republican redistricting guru.
Trump failed to learn from the California GOP’s fatal attraction to immigration politics. Instead, he angered Latino voters everywhere by brutally corralling brown-skinned people for deportation without cause.
Mike Madrid, a former Republican strategist who wrote a book on Latino politics, says Trump’s “ICE raids terror” was “no question a big part” of what turned Latinos against the GOP after they moved toward the party in 2024.
And in California and Texas, Madrid notes, Latinos jumped at the chance to “elect one of their own” as governor.
“Let me make something crystal clear,” Becerra said in his election night victory speech, “I didn’t run to make history. I ran to make a difference. … California is exceptional, but it is far from perfect. We have a lot of work to do.”
He’ll have no excuse not to make a substantial difference with a record legislative supermajority to help, a friendly Congress and a weakened White House enemy.
In America, we rebel against tyrants. Reread the Declaration of Independence, whose 250th anniversary we’re fittingly celebrating this historic election year.
Across the country, voters chose to rebel against the despot president and Make America Great Again.
What else you should be reading
The must-read: With death sentence clemency, Newsom takes another big political risk
California vs. Trump: Feds move to dismiss case over 20,000 ballots after Supreme Court denied appeal
The L.A. Times Special: What Becerra’s historic win says about Latino political power in California
Until next week,
George Skelton
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